Responses of Ukrainian Psychotherapists to the Full-Scale War in Ukraine: “Who Am I in Different Social Contexts?”
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.26565/2410-1249-2026-25-08Keywords:
war, identity, self-representation, self-worth, art therapy, art therapyGestalt therapy, psychological adaptationAbstract
Background. Full-scale war in Ukraine is a prolonged stress context that may reshape self-presentation and identity experience. For psychology and psychotherapy, it is important to empirically capture how wartime reality is reflected in the self even when it is not explicitly verbalized. Objective. To examine forms of responding to “war” as an integral stressor using an art-based self-representation task (“Who am I in different social contexts?”). Methods. A mixed-methods design was applied. Participants (N=120; May 2025) completed a “vytynanka” task in a large Gestalt group, producing textual and/or symbolic self-definitions. Materials were coded across 41 parameters; analyses included descriptive statistics, Pearson’s χ², Spearman correlations with false discovery rate control (FDR), and k-modes clustering. An integral Self-Worth Index (0–5) was computed. At the final stage, result tables were analyzed with ChatGPT-5 to extract response forms (7 hypotheses were generated for subsequent discussion). Results. War was explicitly mentioned by 6.7%, and 11.7% indicated personal war involvement; 91% of works contained text. The mean Self-Worth Index was M=2.85 (SD≈1.56), with a median of 3. Referencing war was not associated with lower self-worth, but it was linked to greater concern about the future (r≈0.43; p≈0.004). Conclusions. Art-based self-representation differentiates patterns of integrating versus avoiding war-related content in identity and highlights the role of emotional complexity in understanding adaptation under chronic stress.
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